In a last-minute push to educate and enroll area residents in health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, health departments from Peoria, Fulton, Tazewell and Woodford counties will set up b...

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In a last-minute push to educate and enroll area residents in health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, health departments from Peoria, Fulton, Tazewell and Woodford counties will set up booths noon to 4 p.m. Sunday at Northwoods Mall, upper center court.

March 31 is the deadline to enroll to avoid penalties for not having health insurance in 2014. People who are eligible for Medicaid can enroll throughout the year. People whose circumstances change, such as through retirement or divorce, also can enroll through the health care marketplace throughout the year.

For more information about health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act, contact:

PEORIA — With the online enrollment process finally up and running, varied networks of counselors and volunteers helping people sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act are racing to the next hurdle — enrolling as many people as possible before open enrollment ends March 31.

Jimmy Dahman, an organizer for Enroll America, a national not-for-profit group devoted to expanding health care coverage, is meeting people where they are: at bus stops, soup kitchens and the entrance of Kmart on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

UnityPoint Health-Methodist is trying to make sure the community knows the hospital has counselors available to answer questions or navigate the health insurance marketplace. The hospital is placing ads in local newspapers. The public also can pick up appointment cards at Methodist clinic locations and at the hospital’s emergency and patient registration departments.

Representatives from four area health departments will be at Northwoods Mall on Saturday answering questions about insurance under ACA, also known as Obamacare. And Get Covered Illinois, the state’s official site for all things ACA, is on a road tour across the state to raise awareness about the upcoming deadline, not to mention the penalties the uninsured face if they don’t have health insurance by March 31.

“What we’re seeing in Peoria and across Illinois is people want insurance, and they want education about insurance,” said David Elin, state director of Enroll America.

But if enrollment for the month of March goes anything like enrollment over the past five months, plenty of Illinois residents will be uninsured by the deadline.

Locally, for instance, the Peoria City/County Health Department had enrolled 524 people by the end of February, about 75 percent of them in Illinois’ expanded Medicaid program. The agency assisted many more, according to Kelly Stewart of the health department. But the health department’s goal for assistance and outreach, as set by the state, originally was 6,000.

Tazewell County Health Department had assisted with 382 applications, compared with an outreach goal of 7,000. Heartland Community Health Clinic’s had enrolled almost 1,000, compared with a goal of 2,600.

When the enrollment period began in October, Illinois had an estimated 1.8 million uninsured. By the end of January, Get Covered Illinois counted 270,602 newly enrolled under ACA. About two-thirds of the total, or 182,000, were eligible for the state’s expanded Medicaid program. It’s not clear how many of the remaining group were uninsured when they enrolled in a private plan through the ACA’s online marketplace or how many were like Ron Cluskey.

Cluskey, 62, of Elmwood had been paying a little more than $500 a month in premiums for a Blue Cross Blue Shield plan when he tried his chances in the ACA health care marketplace. He selected a Coventry Healthcare preferred-provider plan that covers 70 percent of his benefits at $6.15 a month, with the help of subsidies.

Page 2 of 2 - The Affordable Care Act overcame legal and political challenges only to have one of its central pieces, the online marketplaces, roll out in a maze of computer glitches, delays and reversals allowing people to keep their old plans.

The marketplace enrollment process started working smoothly by mid-January, more than three months after the open enrollment began, according to Kirsten Hanson, a certified application counselor at Methodist.

“Now I think we’re in for a very busy three weeks,” Hanson said of the March 31 deadline.

Pam Adams can be reached at 686-3245 or padams@pjstar.com. Follow her on Twitter @padamspam.